Rosberg: Tyres were safety concern before British GP

Nico Rosberg insists the safety concerns with the current tyres was an issue before the series of punctures during the British Grand Prix.

Pirelli has revised its tyres for this weekend’s race. Previously some teams blocked changes to the tyres, saying it would impair their performance.

But Rosberg believes: “It’s always been a safety issue. Silverstone hasn’t changed anything. It’s always been safety, there’s been punctures before Silverstone which was an issue.”

He added the problems seen at Silverstone showed the tyres should have been changed sooner: “It’s always easier to say afterwards. But for sure Silverstone was not good so it would have been better to bring them in earlier but it’s always easy to say in hindsight.”

“Anyway I trust the FIA and Pirelli to do a good job now and make the most of it and try and sort things out, I’m sure they’ve done the right things for here.”

Pirelli said one of the causes of the punctures seen last week was the teams’ practice of swapping the tyres between different sides of the car. Rosberg said ending that practice will affect Mercedes:

“It’s going to affect us, yeah. Because just in Silverstone we swapped the tyres. We like swapping the tyres! So it’s going to be different and we need to adapt again.”

Rosberg added it wasn’t clear how the changes to the tyres would affect the competitive order: “We ran these tyres in Montreal for a couple of laps, didn’t learn much, it could be all different.”

“All of a sudden we could be a bit slower here or there, or quicker than other teams, who knows? It might shuffle things around a bit.”

Indeed but Ferrari and Lotus rushed to say Red Bull was whining because they couldn’t get their tyres working despite LEADING both championships. Pirelli presented a quick fix but Ferrari, Lotus and FI blocked it…